37. The Mystery
IAN
That damned box of merchandise in the shell of an office—it sat in my brain like a parasite and sucked up all my attention.
It had had the hand-drawn marks on the side that Nicky used for her inventory system. There was no reason for that to matter, but somehow it did.
Nicky clearly thought nothing about it. Shirts, CDs, and programs for Bruce to give to the press. When I looked around as the last VIP made their way out of the suite and into the darkness, the box of merch was gone.
The press was packing up. Probably had their freebies neatly tucked away.
And yet . . .
I shook it off. Kissed my mother goodbye. Bumped fists with Dom. Hugged Betts. Ran through my handshake with Finn. “Seven more concerts, and then we’ll be back for the pair of gigs at Madison Square Garden,” I told him. “Home in no time.”
“I’m going to wear my hoodie every day,” he promised. He would too. I loved that kid.
Then they were gone, and we were back on the bus. Archer tried to broach the subject of Big Pat, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
Nicky tried again that night while she and I were getting sleepy on our sofa.
“He should have been there,” she said out of nowhere.
At least I didn’t have to pretend not to understand. Not with Nicky. “I don’t know why I was so surprised. He hates that I play.”
I’d forgotten to take off my fuse medallion. She stroked my neck and chest as she traced the path of the leather cord. “He ought to be proud of you.”
I tipped my head down, not wanting to confront the reality. “Maybe he would be if we hadn’t fought pretty much all my life. He could probably get past this”—I gestured through the dimness at the bus around me as a stand-in for the entire tour—“if he and I got along.”
She sighed. “Could be the two of you are too much alike?” she suggested.
The thought angered me. I rolled to my back. “We’re nothing alike.”
“Okay.” Her voice was soothing. I was being handled, and I didn’t like it. But I did like when she scooted closer, looping her arm through mine and laying her head on my shoulder. With a sigh, I swung my arm wide, and she settled against my side.
Where she was supposed to be.
“Can we not talk about it?” I asked.
“We can not talk about it,” she promised, pressing a kiss to my chest.
I nudged her head up until I could capture her lips. The kiss was soft. Warm, not hot. I was tired. She was too. She tucked back into my side and slowly led me into sleep.
We headed back south to San Francisco. The tour was in a rough circle around the nation, but scheduling was tricky, and sometimes we backtracked. The San Francisco show was excellent, and already people were singing along to “Street Dancing.”
“We need to get back into a recording studio,” I said to Archer and Mal in the VIP suite afterward, once we greeted any of the high-dollar fans who wanted to meet us. The line waiting to meet Sheree was, naturally, down the room and out the door.
Nicky was, of course, at Sheree’s side, helping her. I found I was moving through the room, strolling with Charlotte and scanning the space in casual search for an office where a box of merch could be sitting . . . there.
In the back of the room this time, but the low lights in the office showed the box of T-shirts, et cetera.
There were no marks on the box.
“Arch.” I nudged him. “Hey, Archer.”
He was flirting with a journalist. I got in his line of sight and jerked my chin. He broke away and turned to me as she went back to eyeing Sheree.
“Pardon me—” he said to me formally, about to protest.
I cut him off. “She wasn’t going to bone you. Look at the shoes.” He grinned and shrugged. “Do me a favor? Look in that office behind me. No, be casual. See that box? Okay, do you see any marks on the box? Like a handwritten number-and-letter combination?”
“From here? What’s up?”
“Do you see a code?”
“No. What’s going on?”
Mal arrived and wanted to get in on it too. “Gentlemen,” he said. “What are we trying to not look at?”
Confronted, I had to explain to them that I had a hinky feeling. “Something’s going on with the merch, and they’re trying to accuse Nicky. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know something’s happening.”
“It’s not Nicky.” Archer said it like it was a foregone conclusion, and Mal nodded. My brothers.
“I know. But if merch is being stolen, then what’s that box doing just lying there? Nicky says Bruce gives it out to the press, but I’ve never seen any press leaving with a T-shirt. Or a CD or a program. Have you guys?”
Mal shrugged. “Can’t say I ever looked. What about the marks?”
“Nicky made an inventory of the merch. She used her own code, and I saw it on the box in Seattle. But I don’t see it on this—Mal! Wait!”
Unconcerned with who was looking, Mal walked into the office like he belonged there. He spun the box on the table, looking at all four faces, and returned to us with a shrug. “No marks.”
Archer and Mal looked at me. “They’ve probably reordered merchandise since Nicky was in the merch room,” Archer offered.
“Yeah,” I said. That made sense. Still . . .
“There’s my favorite band!” Bruce appeared in front of us, arms outstretched as if he was going to hug all three of us at once. Archer, Mal, and I closed ranks, standing shoulder to shoulder without conscious thought.
“Bruce,” Archer said in acknowledgment.
“Guys, that was a hell of a concert tonight! We at Lyre Records are very impressed with ‘Street Dancing.’ We want to get you into the studio as soon as we can!”
A bolt of interest zipped through me. “We were just talking about that,” Mal admitted.
“Of course you were! Why don’t we go into your pressroom and talk about it?” He shot a glance at the end of the crowded line, where Nicky was taking yet another photo of Sheree with a wealthy hippie and his chosen companion. “After you!”
He got behind us and sheepdogged us down the hall to the room we’d used for interviews—or he tried. Charlotte stuck her nose in his crotch, and after that, he gave us more space.
He shut the door behind us and turned with a grin. “I’ll get right to the point, boys. Between ‘Charlotte’s Lullaby’ and ‘Street Dancing,’ we think you’ve got the spine of your next record. We want to be a part of that.” With a flourish, he pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and a large black pen.
“Oh boy,” Mal muttered.
“In fact, we want to offer you a five-record deal. How’s that sound?”
“Holy fuck!” Archer turned to us with a grin. “Five records! And videos? Do we have a budget to get some videos made?”
“We can certainly add it in. A rider. Just sign here, and we’ll get right on that!”
Mal put a hand on Archer’s arm. “Hang on,” he said.
Mal and I were of one mind. This was the man who was going to cut us out of the appearance fee for the Independence Festival. I wasn’t brilliant, but I could learn.
“We’ll need some time to review the contract,” I said.
Bruce frowned. “Time? I thought we were friends.” It may have occurred to him that he’d tried to cheat us out of five thousand dollars, so he rushed on. “You can compare this word for word with the contract you signed last year—the two-album deal. Not a thing has been added except for the number of albums. Which, I assume, meets with your approval?”
Even Archer had backed up emotionally. “It’s not that we don’t want to make five more albums,” he said. “We just need to get our manager to look over it.”
“She’s helping Sheree right now,” Bruce said disgustedly.
“Nicky’s not our manager,” Mal said. “Our manager is named Morey. Nicky is our friend. She does marketing and publicity, which is something I would have thought Lyre Records would do.”
“Well, Nicky is our intern! We got you marketing and publicity. She’s right out there!”
He was slippery. A snake.
“We’ll take a look.” I leaned forward and plucked the papers from his hand. “Email me a copy so we can get it to Morey, and we’ll get back to you.”
As one, we turned for the door, Charlotte coming to her feet to join us. But Bruce didn’t like us leaving. “I’m afraid this deal has a deadline. I’ll need your answer in an hour.”
He looked smug, so it gave me great satisfaction to parrot back to him a line my father loved.
“If you need an answer now,” I said, “then the answer is no. If you’re still interested, email us the contract. Guys?”
Mal opened the door and ushered us out. As I passed him, I saw he was giving Bruce his friendliest grin. You’d have to know Mal very well to see the menace behind the smile.
By unspoken accord, we skipped the VIP suite and headed straight back for the bus, not speaking a word until we were inside.
Archer looked at us hopefully as we gathered around the table in the kitchenette. “Five records?”
Mal leaned back and crossed his arms. “I’m thinking about Bruce trying to take our money for the festival.”
I nodded. “I was thinking that too. And anyone who wants an immediate decision is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
“Wool is too itchy,” Archer said, a sentiment that would have branded him a dumb blond if he hadn’t had a twinkle in his eye. “So . . . what do we do? Do we really have to match this contract page for page with the one we signed last year?”
We all regarded the thick fistful of papers I was holding. The type was tiny and full of phrases like notwithstanding the previous and pertaining to the subsequent section, and all three sets of eyes were glazing over at the prospect of being forced to make sense out of it.
Archer answered his own question. “We wait for Nicky. Let’s see what she thinks of this.”
I sat back, relieved that I didn’t have to offer my girlfriend as the cure-all for everything that might go wrong. Even though that was what she had become for me.
When Nicky got to the bus, we all spoke to her at once, and she made us sit down and speak calmly, one after the other. “What do you think?” I asked when we’d given her all the details of Bruce being a lying, cheating snake.
She thought about it. “We need a lawyer,” she said, musing, “but it would have to be an entertainment lawyer. Someone with expertise—or—” She sat up, surprising Charlotte, who was, despite her overbearing size, sleeping across both Nicky and Mal’s stomachs. “When Sheree’s onstage and you guys are waiting for your song to close her first act, who’s in the greenroom with you?”
I looked at Mal and Archer. “Um, there’s the hair and makeup teams, and the dressers,” Mal said.
“No, the dressers are offstage, waiting for costume changes,” Archer corrected Mal. “There’s Dean, but he’s usually sleeping.”
Nicky frowned. “Sheree’s manager doesn’t hang out backstage anymore?”
“Who, Clinton? Yeah, he’s there too.”
“There you go.” She sat back, satisfied. “When we’re in Calgary, you ask him to review the contract and ask him what he thinks. Do it when Dean is asleep.”
I polled Mal and Archer with a look. All three of us had a fierce, steely resolution to our expressions. “We’ll do it,” I said. “Thanks, Nicky.”
She grinned, proud, and I was forced to drag her out from under the dog and kiss her soundly.
“Jeez, guys,” Mal mocked. “Get a room!”
“Wish I had one,” I said, leering at Nicky, who laughed.
By the time we got to Clinton—just as Nicky had suggested, during the first act of Sheree’s concert in Calgary—I’d managed to fight my way through the entire contract, which seemed unnecessarily wordy to me but which didn’t say we were selling our souls or anything.
Clinton shot a look at Dean, who was stretched out on a sofa and snoring lightly. “He won’t appreciate this,” he said, turning away from Dean and flipping through the contract.
What had taken me hours took him about two minutes. “This is an absolutely standard contract,” he said, tossing it down on the table.
“So we can sign it?” Archer asked.
Clinton looked at him. “Do you guys have a manager? An agent?”
“We have a manager.” As usual, Archer was our spokesman.
“Any good?”
“Well . . . we really like him.”
“That’s nice. I’m going to hook you up with someone at the New Talent Agency. That’s the company Sheree uses.”
Eyebrows up, Archer looked at Mal and then me, apparently satisfied to find that our eyebrows, too, were in the “surprised” position. “You are?”
“Guys.” Clinton sighed. “You’re very hot right now. And the dog is an incredible gimmick. And a good dog.” He caressed Charlotte’s head, who wagged her tail against my thigh. “You are long past a standard contract. Lyre is trying to screw you.”
A warrior’s lust for blood, primitive and powerful, welled up in me. Bruce. That fucker.
“Don’t blame him,” Clinton said, apparently reading our combined fury. “It’s his job to make money off you for his company. It’s your job to not let him do it. You need a good agent and an excellent manager—and the number of an entertainment lawyer, but let’s start with the agency.”
By the time the stage manager came to collect us to finish the first act with Sheree (she’d managed to get the entire Calgary Stampede Showband to come onstage with us to play “O Canada”; it was going to bring the house down), we had contact information for Phil MacGregor, the agent Clinton recommended and Morey’s blessing to get in touch with the new guy. Before we went on, I texted Nicky up in the VIP suite.
Thanks. Good idea
Clinton helped?
Helped a lot
Is Archer mad? Five records down the drain?
Archer thinks we’re going to rule the world
He’s right
I am so infatuated with you right now
Just right now?
Tell you later
Gotta play
Go get em
I made a mental note to check for the merch box again when we got to the VIP suite.